Smithsonian.com

Lions are often called magnificent, majestic, the “king of beasts.” They’re not often called “meat.”

Lion in South Africa, courtesy of Flickr user Martin Heigan.

But lion meat has been on the menu of several U.S. restaurants in recent years. In South Philadelphia, one restaurant tried serving lion for about six weeks in 2008. As this article explains (with the witty lead-in: “Simba for dinner? You lion.”), Chef Michael Zulli took it off the restaurant’s menu after being barraged with “how-do-you-sleep-at-night phone calls” from the public. He said he didn’t see what the big deal was, since the meat came from an Illinois farm where the animals are legally raised for human consumption.

That same year, a St. Petersburg Times reporter wrote a rave review of a steak house’s lion rib chops. This spring in Sacramento, Flaming Grill Cafe, which specializes in exotic meats like alligator, yak and ostrich, briefly sold lion meat burgers. And this week, another U.S. restaurant—this time in Mesa, Arizona—earned notoriety for serving lion meat as part of a novelty menu to celebrate the World Cup and its host nation, South Africa. The owner reportedly received a bomb threat and more than 150 angry e-mails, and seemed bemused by the outrage. The Telegraph quotes him as saying: “In Africa they do eat lions, so I assume if it’s OK for Africans to eat lions then it should be OK for us.”

Is it really? In the wild, African lions are considered a “vulnerable species,” only one step below endangered, and up to one-quarter of wild lion populations have been lost in the past decade or two. But lions raised on game farms—as was said to be the case in all of the above examples—don’t factor into wild populations. So, on the one hand, maybe it doesn’t really matter. On the other hand: doesn’t creating a market for lion meat as an expensive delicacy risk encouraging the growth of a black market in illegally hunted lion meat?

And then there’s the basic gut feeling many people have that it’s morally wrong to eat lions, the way it makes most of us squeamish to think about eating a house cat, a dog or a horse. They’re too intelligent; too simpatico. (There’s not a lot of logic when you think it through—it’s not a matter of size or fur or even cuteness, since most of us eat creatures like cows and rabbits. But who said feelings were logical?)

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I think you’ve probably picked up on my maple madness by now, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise: my ideal summer treat is not a popsicle, a sundae or even an ordinary ice cream cone. It’s a maple creemee.

Courtesy Flickr user S_K_S

Creemee may be a peculiarly Vermont term, or at least unique to New England, as I haven’t heard it since I moved away. Basically, it’s what other people call soft-serve ice cream, the kind that swirls beautifully into one of those torch-shaped cones. (The spelling is open to debate, but it’s pronounced just like the word “creamy.”)

Typically, you get these at a “creemee stand,” the kind of establishment with a walk-up window and a bunch of high-school kids getting their first taste of a summer job. You don’t bother taking more than a few steps before giving it a good licking. Maybe you make it as far as a sticky picnic table; maybe you just lean on the hood of your car. If you came with other people, you don’t talk much until your tongues have worked their way down to cone level, where there’s less risk of losing the precious stuff to meltdown. (Although if you drop it, they’ll probably give you another one for free. Meanwhile, your dog will be ecstatic. Not that I would know…)

Of course, creemees come in ordinary flavors, like vanilla and chocolate, and those are pleasant. But in Vermont you can also find creemees flavored with real maple syrup, which gives them a light golden hue and the sweet taste of, well, maple. Sorry. Words fail me. They’re that good.

Many people think the state’s best maple creemees are at Morse Farm in Montpelier, and after trying one this summer, I can see why—plenty of real syrup flavor, married with a rich, smooth texture that lives up to the name’s promise. Personally, I still prefer the creemees at the Vermont Maple Outlet between Jeffersonville and Cambridge, though I may be a bit biased because I grew up in that area.

If you think my creemee fanaticism is bad, I’d just like to point out that others have it worse: there’s a Creemee fan page on Facebook, with nearly 10,000 fans, and one Vermonter has an entire blog called I Dream of Creemee.

Have you heard of creemees? What’s your favorite kind of ice cream?

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…the next Inviting Writing theme! In celebration of summer, we’re focusing on a simple pleasure that we hope everyone has experienced at least once: Picnics.

The rules are simple: Tell us a true story that somehow relates to that theme (and food, of course), and e-mail it to FoodandThink@gmail.com with “Inviting Writing: Picnics” in the subject line. We’ll pick three of the best, lightly edit them and publish them over the next few Mondays here on the blog. For more guidance, please read this and peruse last month’s stories about “fear and food.”

I’ll start the party by telling you about a particular picnic I remember…

A Picnic for the Fourth of…January?

Northerners know the peculiar illness well. It often infects a household after the holidays have come and gone, leaving a wake of wrapping paper, pine needles and chores. Faced with the grim promise of three or four more months of cold, snow and slush that will keep them largely cooped up indoors, folks can go a little crazy. It’s called “cabin fever.”

Courtesy of Flickr user Mykl Roventine

My mom must have had a bad case of it one midwinter afternoon when I was about thirteen years old. I don’t remember the exact date, but I think it was sometime in January. My friend Kristen had come over, and we were hanging out upstairs in my room, when my mother called up to us.

“Find some shorts and T-shirts to put on, and come downstairs, girls!” she hollered in her I’m-up-to-something-fun tone of voice.

We rolled our eyes, being teenagers, but were curious enough to play along. I retrieved some cut-off jean shorts and T-shirts from deep in the dresser drawers, and we even found some flip-flops and sunhats in the closet. (I’m embarrassed to remember this, but I think we also tucked our oversized shirts into those glittery plastic T-shirt slides. Hey, it was the early ’90s.)

In the living room, we discovered a fire roaring in the potbelly stove. My mother had spread a checkered cloth over the carpet in front of it, and laid out a full-fledged picnic, complete with the basket, paper plates and plastic cups, and she’d festooned the room with small American flags and other red, white and blue decorations.

“It’s the Fourth of July!” she declared. “And it’s a hot one, isn’t it?”

The funny thing is, I don’t remember what we actually ate. Probably hot dogs or hamburgers that my mom surreptitiously prepared in the kitchen, and some grapes or other out-of-season fresh fruit she’d splurged on at the supermarket. I think there were cans of soda, chips and ice cream sandwiches.

But the real joy was the picnic itself, an act of defiance in the face of winter. We giggled as we complained about our “sunburns,” pretended to find ants in the carpet, and blasted cassette tapes from our boom box. It reminded me of other outdoor meals my mother had orchestrated through the years, from fried eggs cooked on campstoves to elaborate birthday-party picnics at the beach by Lake Champlain. Just the word “picnic” sounded playful and bright.

From our ground-level seats, we couldn’t see any snow outside the windows. Maybe it really was summer?

I think that’s when my father walked in from shoveling the driveway, stamping his boots and shaking his gloves and hat to dry them.

“Cabin fever, eh?” he remarked, chuckling.

(Interestingly, according to food historian Kathryn McGowan’s blog, the first picnics were held indoors. Guess my mom’s idea wasn’t so crazy after all!)

As you’re probably aware, Father’s Day is this Sunday in the United States. Wondering what you can cook up to make the day special? Here are a few fun ideas:

Courtesy Flickr user snarkygurl

1. A truly tasteful tie. People blog about the strangest things. A few months ago, I came across someone who just likes putting weird things in coffee, and yesterday, I got an email from a young guy who “likes neckties. A lot.” He’s got an entire blog called Tiepedia, and for Father’s Day, he collected a bunch of Flickr photos of necktie cakes. Enjoy, and perhaps be inspired to create your own. (Come on, does he ever wear the real ties you pick out, anyway? Might as well give him the kind you can all share.)

2. Mower dessert? Torture Dad sweetly by reminding him of his household chores. Or give him these lawnmower cupcakes along with a coupon promising to take those chores off his hands for a while.

3. Thank him for raising such a brat. Then make up for it by grilling him some of Bobby Flay’s beer-braised brats.

4. Think he’s full of beans? I don’t know about your father, but mine drinks more coffee than Juan Valdez himself, so I often give him a bag or two of good beans. (And since he’s a bit of a nerd, one year I gave him this T-shirt depicting a caffeine molecule.) I bet he’d also love a coffee cake made with these recipes from Joy the Baker and The Pioneer Woman, both of which involve actual coffee.

5. Hop on Pop. If your dad, like mine, is a punster, he’ll appreciate being served any of the following on Father’s Day: Popovers, poptarts, popcorn, popsicles, soda pop…am I missing any others?

On the premiere episode of Top Chef‘s seventh season last night, there was a moment when judge Tom Colicchio dismissed one contestant’s dish with a single complaint: “I couldn’t get past the salt.”

It’s not the first time he’s said a dish was “way too salty.” How could these skilled chefs keep making such a seemingly simple mistake? Perhaps it’s just the stress of being in an intense, highly publicized competition. Or perhaps the line between “salty” and “too salty” is shakier than most of us realize. Genetics, it turns out, toys with our taste buds in several different ways. (Lisa provided a great primer on the genetics of taste a few weeks ago.)

Macro image of table salt. Courtesy Flickr user parl.

A new study led by John Hayes, a food scientist at Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, shows that so-called supertasters, who perceive flavors more intensely than the ordinary-tongued masses, tend to consume more salt in their diet than less-sensitive “nontasters.” That may sound counterintuitive, but he notes that salt helps to block out bitter tastes which supertasters might otherwise find overwhelming.

“Despite adding less salt…supertasters consumed more sodium through food, as salt was more important to [their food] preference, both for its salty taste and masking of bitterness,” the study concluded.

And while nontasters don’t consume as much salt in the form of processed foods like chips and pretzels, they tend to be more heavy-handed with a salt shaker at the table (or in the kitchen, presumably) than other people.

Not everyone is either a supertaster or a nontaster—about 50 percent of us fall somewhere in the middle—but this suggests to me that chefs whose tongues tend toward either extreme might be prone to over-salting.

When it comes to diet and health concerns, it’s a bit clearer where to draw the line. Salt contains sodium, and too much sodium intake can lead to high blood pressure, increased risk of stroke and heart disease, but how much is too much? The USDA’s current guidelines recommend limiting sodium intake to 2,300 milligrams a day in healthy individuals, and an advisory panel has recommended lowering the sodium allowance to 1,500 mg for everyone. (The salt industry says such a drastic reduction would be “reckless” and argues that it may be safe to consume up to 5,750 mg of sodium a day, but I’m inclined to take their advice with a grain of…well, you know.)

Do you think you might be more or less sensitive to saltiness than most people?